Clearly, Kenneth Grant found great and extensive application of the genre in his work, drawing most notably from Lovecraft and penning a good share of "weird fiction" himself. I think the same is true with Crowley. He recommends students read books like Dracula and La Bas while writing stories of the strange and macabre.

Ultimately, stories with frightful and unsettling content go back much further than the above mentioned writers. They are part of our myth cycles, cultures and oral traditions. It used to be a Halloween tradition for my mom to read us kids an abridged version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

But you asked specifically about movies. I agree very much re:

Posted by: @david-lemieux

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in the past 20 years the horror movie genre has become a ridiculous vile gore fest to an extent

I used to say that I only THINK I like horror films. In reality, I only like the IDEA of horror films. This is precisely for the reasons you mention. There is so much empty-headed gratuitous trash meant to be consumed like so much fast food.

By contrast, Francis Ford Coppola's DRACULA was glorious, I thought. It had all the elements of a "Horror Film" but it was supercharged with pathos, moral dilemma, tragedy...one left the experience of watching with elements of the tale still jangling about in the psyche, replaying, challenging further feeling and thought. 

I think I might also most enjoy films with elements of horror but not specifically categorized as such. 

I'll share this:

I watched The Human Centipede when it first came out. It really didn't have much more to offer except the gross-out factor and a nihilistic sense of despair. I also felt like I needed to cleanse my head after seeing it. So I watched The Exorcist. Now this may sound odd but (unlike my first viewing of this film as a child where I found it traumatizing) I saw in it a remarkable masterpiece of deep conflict and existential daring. We all remember it being about the demon possessed girl spitting pea soup and being a potty mouth but it is actually the story of the PRIEST who is caught between realms of science and spirit, rationality and chaos. In the end, he chooses to sacrifice himself to save the innocent child he has been trying to help. The grand finale is a dramatic and harrowing display of heroism. It makes me (or us-the audience) ask: how I would act...do I have the balls, the heart, the strength to rise to the occasion like that?

I didn't get so much of that from The Human Centipede.

A very interesting topic. Thanks, David. I hope the discussion continues!

Posted by: @david-lemieux

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Horror Movies?

Please link this thread to A.C. relativity or relationships.

As it now stands, it is ineligible for posting anywhere here.

Posted by: @shiva

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Please link this thread to A.C. relativity or relationships.

As it now stands, it is ineligible for posting anywhere here

If you read my reply to David, you'll note that I call attention to AC's dalliance with "weird fiction." 

And I will also ask (for the sake of giving things a chance here): 

Do we consider Bruce Dickinson's Chemical Wedding a "horror film?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14t7nR2nEwg  

Posted by: @shiva

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Please link this thread to A.C. relativity or relationships.

As it now stands, it is ineligible for posting anywhere here.

.

You're asking me how a Demonologist who wrote adoring poems to Lucifer and Satan,  boasted publicly about killing a cat, slitting a goat's throat in some dark 'ritual' and who painted big scary demons on the walls of his house is somehow related to Horror Movies.  Right, ok. 

Remember Crowley at the Spanish bullfight when he said he realized that the sight of blood is beautiful i.e to him, as a yogi, his passions were not (allegedly) ill-regulated unlike non-yogis and he was therefore flex-able to be impressed with a particular shade of red that Nature offers up (like an artist).  Now, yeah sickos like the sight of blood too but they are slaves to their passions....oh shit.....not another 'some stars are naturally violent' thread diversion.  As I said e.g. Wes Craven appears to be on the same wavelength.

Anyway the well-balanced yogi and the confrontation with things horrible is extended here in Crowley's book; 

Liber CL
נעל
A Sandal
De Lege Libellum
L— L— L— L— L

 the second of these lesser modes is the practice of the mental apprehension and analysis of ideas, mainly as I have already taught you, but with especial emphasis in choice of things naturally repulsive, in particular, death itself, and its phenomena ancillary. Thus the Buddha bade his disciples to meditate upon Ten Impurities, that is, upon ten cases of death of decomposition, so that the Aspirant, identifying himself with his own corpse in all these imagined forms, might lose the natural horror, loathing, fear or disgust which he might have had for them. 

This is what Wes Craven was saying about Horror Movies in that they force the viewer to go somewhere he doesn't want to go and it's a well balanced purgative (didn't the Greek playwrights also do that?...N.B. the link there is Crowley's advice for all to go get a classical education).  Someone else agrees here in this article; 

Benefits Of Watching Horror Movies | Мusic Gateway (musicgateway.com)

Posted by: @kidneyhawk

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. He recommends students read books like Dracula and La Bas while writing stories of the strange and macabre.

Ultimately, stories with frightful and unsettling content go back much further than the above mentioned writers. They are part of our myth cycles, cultures and oral traditions. It used to be a Halloween tradition for my mom to read us kids an abridged version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. 

But you asked specifically about movies. . So I watched The Exorcist. Now this may sound odd but (unlike my first viewing of this film as a child where I found it traumatizing) I saw in it a remarkable masterpiece of deep conflict and existential daring. We all remember it being about the demon possessed girl spitting pea soup and being a potty mouth but it is actually the story of the PRIEST who is caught between realms of science and spirit, rationality and chaos. In the end, he chooses to sacrifice himself to save the innocent child he has been trying to help. The grand finale is a dramatic and harrowing display of heroism. It makes me (or us-the audience) ask: how I would act...do I have the balls, the heart, the strength to rise to the occasion like that?

Exactly , Crowley's recommended reading list.  Well the difference between the movie and the novel is?  Is there more of an active involvement in reading scenes as oppose to having the ideas handed to you in well-engineered audio and visual?  

The Exorcist, yes , exorcism, quite relevant to Crowley's works.  

Posted by: @david-lemieux

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You're asking me how a Demonologist who wrote adoring poems to Lucifer and Satan,  boasted publicly about killing a cat ...

Well, yes, if you had cited such connections in the opening post, it would have been all tidy and locked up. KH stepped in and supplied some links. By the way, horror movies are fictional, AC was (apparently) real.

@kidneyhawk

Posted by: @kidneyhawk

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Do we consider Bruce Dickinson's Chemical Wedding a "horror film?"

I bought the DVD when it was released. I thought it more of a keystone kops type comedy.

I would recommend, and i am sure a good few in here have watched this, A Dark Song.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4805316/

The value of Horror movies enables you to view the darkness of people souls, abject fear, primal or ancestral trauma in various ways. It reminds us that we have darkness inside, many do not listen and act on it, but its present. Acknowledgement of the darkness and bringing it into balance with the light is fundamental IMO.

Agreed, Horror films these days tend to be shock and awe bloodfests, but there are those that leave a mark on you psychologically. Few, but they exist. I think a good horror film leaves you almost traumatized, it shakes up your mind and allows new neural pathways to form.   

Posted by: @kidneyhawk

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If you read my reply to David, you'll note that I call attention to AC's dalliance with "weird fiction." 

Check this out, what do you think?  Dr Phibes rises again (1972) - YouTube

I think V.P. hammed it up a bit (nothing unusual there), and that the film itself was a touch cheesy and a trifle corny in parts. 

So overall then, something of a croque monsieur sandwich with a small cob on the side.

To take just the beginning, Doc Phibes' whole house was destroyed and left as rubble for three years with the sole exception of a valuable Wurlitzer organ left in pristine and playable condition from when he emerges - as if he'd just had a nap of forty winks - aside from a small patina of dust?

I much preferred the following year's Theatre of Blood, with ol' Vince acting against type (not) as the wildly over-demonstrative thespian Edward Lionheart who takes Shakespearian revenge against his unappreciative critics in arguably his greatest film...

Argumentatively yours,

Norma N Joy Conquest